


dance by the light of the moon

by checkmate



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, M/M, and it's not particularly cheery, i started writing this sad shitshow in december, it's basically an introspective on tony's infinite capacity to take the blame for everything, no infinity war spoilers, suicide ideation, this started off as a "it's a wonderful life" AU so take that as you will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 20:34:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14433567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/checkmate/pseuds/checkmate
Summary: Iron Man is bored of flying. Now, Tony Stark wants to remember what it feels like to fall.He never asked to be a hero. He never asked to be an idol, or a role model. He only wanted to clear up his own mess, his father's mess. None of this was supposed to happen.





	dance by the light of the moon

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a "It's A Wonderful Life" AU for Christmas, but I couldn't figure out how to not make it really depressing, so... 
> 
> Trigger warnings abound for suicide ideation, alcoholism and Tony's insistence on taking the blame for things outside his control. NO INFINITY WAR SPOILERS. I'm seeing it in six hours and I can't fucking contain myself.

_ Jump. _

Tony ignores the voice in his head. He has always been good at ignoring things he doesn’t want to do, so it makes little difference when it comes from him. It’s the times when his darkest desires intersect with that voice that he knows he’s in trouble. Like the voice telling him to come up here, to stand above the city he calls home and yet never feels at home in, and look down. It’s his third time this week. 

Iron Man is bored of flying. Now, Tony Stark wants to remember what it feels like to fall.

The thing is, Tony spends a lot of time standing on this ledge. The entirety of New York City stretches out underneath him, each yellow cab a dot moving haphazardly through the gridlocked streets, a mass of pedestrians all but indistinguishable from each other at this height. He knows the view well, knows how the setting sun illuminates the buildings around him, staining the sky a delicate orange-pink. Reconciling the hustle and bustle of the city with the peaceful view from a hundred feet above is a trickier challenge; the noise, the dirt all gets lost on its way up. Tony doesn’t spend much time in the tower any more, not since Avengers HQ officially moved upstate. Somehow, Stark Tower went from being one of his least favourite places in the world to one of his most and then right back again, all in the space of a few years, so he keeps his eyes out on the New York skyline, refusing to turn around and see the memories appear inside the penthouse like ghosts. The wind whips around his head and carries with it the distant noises of Thor laughing at one of Steve’s corny jokes, Clint protesting as Natasha whooped his ass at Battleships for the seventh time in a row, the sounds of a team reluctantly becoming a family. 

Someone clears their throat behind him, and Tony, not realising he isn’t alone, startles. Pepper or Rhodey or Happy, maybe, making sure his life is still just about running smoothly with as little input from him as possible. But when he turns, it’s not Pepper, or Rhodey, or Happy. 

It’s Bruce. 

The pure quantity of things he needs to say becomes so overwhelming so quickly that Tony Stark is left speechless. He hasn’t seen Bruce in two years, at least, not since Sokovia, not since that clusterfuck of a situation, and everything he has got involved with in the meantime isn’t to Bruce’s exact tastes. A part of him, a small part of him, had resigned itself to the reality that this moment would never come, that that battle would be the last the world would ever see of Bruce Banner. Another part of him wondered if he was dead. Without the Other Guy, he might be. 

“Where have you been?” He asks. Looking at Bruce is too much right now, so he remains fixated on the skyline. But Bruce doesn't reply, just walks up behind him, feet hitting the roof decking in a steady rhythm. And then the steady rhythm doesn't falter. Tony turns his head, too late, and sees Bruce Banner step calmly off of the roof. 

Tony jumps before he is aware he made a decision to jump, hitting the thin aluminium cuff on his wrist as he accelerates toward the ground. The suit answers his call, clicking into place before he even passed the thirtieth floor, and from there, it's easy to scoop Bruce into his metal clad arms and fly them both back to the roof. “ _ What the fuck, Banner?”  _ He yells before he even gets the faceplate off. “No one has seen or heard from you in  _ two years _ , and the first thing you do is throw yourself off my roof? What the hell is wrong with you?” 

Bruce gets up gingerly from where Tony had dropped him, but he doesn't look upset, or angry, or even grateful. He is smiling. “Stopped you from jumping.” He says, as if that should have been obvious. 

“You literally just  _ made _ me jump to save your ass.” 

“I made you jump to save  _ your  _ ass.” He corrects. “Plus, you think the Big Guy would let me die that easy?” He grins. Bruce makes for the still ajar door back into the penthouse, and Tony's feet follow without him making any conscious decision to do so, and suddenly he's back in the safety of his lounge, no cliff edge to stand over and dare himself to  _ do it. _

“I wasn't going to jump. I'm Iron Man, remember? I can fly. I just like the view up here.” He lies, the words coming without hesitation. He’s pretty sure Pepper has caught him in the same position before, and whether she bought it or not, she never brought it up again. Bruce, he thinks, might not be so easy to convince. “What’s going on? Where have you been? No-one has seen you in months—” 

He should know better than to think he can distract Bruce with questions. He doesn’t bother answering, and sure, Tony will get a response out of him eventually because Tony Stark always gets what he wants, but it won't be now. Bruce is as stubborn as Tony is persistent. “I wasn't going to jump.” He repeats. Not tonight, anyway. He's drunk. It's too easy, after a few drinks. If he's going to do it, it has to be sober. He has to be sure.

“Good. I'd miss you.” He sits on the couch, a well worn dip in the cushion occupied for the first time in months. “We all would.” 

Tony snorts. “If you're including Steve in that—” 

“I am.”

“Then you're wrong. You've missed a lot, big guy.” Tony grabs a bottle if whiskey and doesn't bother with a glass. “Things have… changed.” 

“And that's why you were going to jump?” 

“I wasn't going to—oh, forget it.” He raises the bottle to his lips and wishes for the courage to go through with it, one day. “The Avengers? It's dead. You missed the final act. Shame, really. We definitely went out with a bang. Shakespearean, almost. Old loyalties, new betrayals, a dude that can make himself thirty feet tall and a kid who thinks The Empire Strikes Back is an old movie.” 

“Straight from the Bard’s mouth.” Bruce smiles, just a little. “It's not your fault, you know.” 

Tony laughs. “You weren't there.” 

“You and Steve have fundamentally different philosophies on almost everything, Tony. You were always going to clash and it was always going to be messy when you did.” 

And that's Bruce through and through, calm and logical. He sees the outcomes of their choices long before they come into play— it's obvious to him. Banner forgets, though, that not everyone is as smart as he is. It comes as a surprise to the rest of them what he has known all along. “Want a drink?” He asks, because the silence is stifling and his mind is still out on that rooftop and the last thing he wants to do right now is talk about Steve and yet he can't help himself. He has a fresh audience, not Pepper, not Happy, definitely not Rhodey. They're all too close to him to be objective; Bruce has no such loyalties. He doesn't want to talk about Steve so why does he struggle so much to find another topic of conversation?

“I could go for a cup of tea.” Bruce is no more comfortable in the tower than he ever was, perched right on the edge of the couch ready to be swallowed up by the upholstery. It's hard, to watch him sit there like nothing has changed when everything has changed, so Tony turns his back, busies himself tracking down a mug and a tea bag and some milk that isn't two weeks out of date so he doesn't have to look at the familiar stranger in his living room. 

Even Tony can only spin out making a cup of tea for so long. “Where have you been?” He asks again as Bruce takes the tea. “I looked for you. I… We wanted you home.”

Bruce shrugs. “Here and there. Finally got to see Asgard.”

“As nice as Thor makes out?” He grins despite himself. Bruce always liked to tease. 

“Don't know, really. It's certainly not any more.” He takes a small sip from the cup, and doesn't wince or spit it back out, so Tony figures the milk is okay. It's been so long he can't tell if Bruce is pulling his leg. Tony would like to think so, but nothing in his eyes suggests a jest. “Not much is like it was before, I guess.” 

Tony drinks to that, polishing of the end of the bottle. The last dreg escapes from the corner of his mouth and trickles into his goatee, and he clumsily wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Everything has gone to shit.” He agrees. 

Bruce eyes him from over his mug, a sad smile twisting his lips. “And that's why you were on the roof? It's got that bad?” 

“I wasn't going to—”

“ _ Cut the shit, Stark.”  _

Tony jumps so bad he drops the bottle. It falls slowly and smashes, throwing shards of dark green glass across the floor. He glances warily at Bruce, expecting to see more green spreading across his skin, fists clenched,  _ something _ , but this is New Bruce. He's so in control, it's easy to forget the Other Guy even exists. Whatever he's doing, it's working. 

Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose with thankfully still pale fingers. “Tony, you can't… Other people might think you just enjoy standing at the top of tall buildings, but you can't lie to me.”

“I can lie to everyone else.” He says before he really thinks it through. 

“Everyone else  _ chooses _ to believe you.” Bruce corrects. “You forget I'm basically the expert when it comes to suicide ideation.” And he manages to say it like he's discussing the weather, and Tony feels even more stupid than he did when Bruce first saw him on the roof. “What's going on, Tony?”

“The Avengers… it's over.” He says, but it's not matter of fact like he’d like it to be. “Because of me. It's over because I killed it, because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut for five minutes—” 

Bruce rolls his eyes. Dude has a shocking bedside manner. “So, what? You and Steve had a fight and the squad broke up so you’re going to Jackson Pollock yourself on the sidewalk? Come on.” He gets up, setting his empty mug on a stack of old newspapers, and forcing Tony out of his chair with a sharp tug. 

“Where are we going?” Tony says, allowing himself to be led along in Bruce's firm grip. The rough, calloused fingers against his remind him of a time long past, and even now, even after everything, Tony knows he will follow Bruce Banner anywhere. He doesn't get a response, he doesn't really expect too. He gets into the cab when Bruce indicates, one pulling up almost exactly the second they step outside the lobby. Two years ago there might have been crowds out here, looking for autographs or snapshots for their Avengers blogs; he never really enjoyed it. Tony never had a problem posing for a photo or signing a scrap of paper— he doesn't like being called a hero. Bruce would shrink away and Steve would blush and Clint would wise crack, but it never really sat right with any of them. Tony isn't sure if the occasional egg splattered against the glass windows, or the tag ‘Free Steve Rogers’ spray painted on the wall was better or worse. At least he isn't being idolized any more. There aren't many people left to miss him now. 

The cab rolls slowly into midtown, getting caught at every crossing and red light. They could have walked faster at this rate, but Tony doesn't suggest it and nor does Bruce.

“Just here.” Bruce instructs the driver and Tony only realised where they are when the cab pulls over. 

“The shawarma place shut down.” He says to waste time before he is chucked out of the car. “Shame. It was good.” 

“It was terrible, Tony.”

“Well.” Tony says with a forced grin. “It was half demolished. We should have gone back at a better time, you know. Seen it at its best, when we hadn't just wrecked the place.”

He steps out onto the shiny new sidewalk, still relatively bare of chewing gum and cigarette butts. The entire block is brand new, some buildings recreated in their original style and others shamelessly modern. It doesn't feel quite real, adjacent to the rest of the city, and Tony knows you don't have to go far from here to see the devastation still too expensive to fix up. 

Really, he knows New York was lucky. Lots of attention, lots of sympathy, the first big Avengers outing. Compared to others, compared to Sokovia, Seoul, they got off lightly.

“Why did you bring me here?” He asks. There’s a reason he refuses to come here. Wouldn’t come for the ribbon cutting, grand re-opening of midtown Manhattan--he left that to Steve and Thor, the friendly, smiley, hot poster boys of the operation. The hotness, in particular, worked in their favour.

“Because you seem to have forgotten—” Bruce starts, but Tony realises; he can’t believe it took him this long to spot it. The official memorial plinth, engraved with the names of the dead, and a  _ thanks  _ to the Avengers— Tony wishes the name hadn’t stuck— who risked their lives to save the people of New York. He knew it was here, but he never felt the need to see it in the flesh. As the stands underneath, morbid curiosity finally getting the better of him, he wishes his eyes would focus anywhere but the #freesteverogers stickers adorning every square inch. 

“This is…” 

“Where you fell.”

“Where you dropped me.” Tony corrects.

Bruce rolls his eyes. “I won’t catch you next time.” 

Tony doesn't trust himself to reply, but Bruce knows him well enough to know he didn’t expect to, didnt  _ want  _ to, even, survive that fall. “This is what you wanted me to see?” He asks, turning his back on the Team Steve paraphernalia. “All the people I let die, and the fact that everyone wants to suck Steve’s fat cock? You think I don’t know that, that I don’t think about it every fucking day?” 

“Not the people you let die, Tony. Look around you.” The plaza is pretty full, a warm summer evening bringing young professionals out for extortionately priced after work drinks, couples strolling blissfully unaware through the shiny new streets. “You flew a nuke into a wormhole, Tony. These are all the people you saved.” 

“Maybe you  _ shouldn’t _ have caught me. They would have all been saved, and….. Ultron, Sokovia, the accords… Would have saved you all a lot of hassle.” 

He expects Bruce to laugh it off— uneasily maybe, but laugh it off all the same. That's the reaction he has come to expect from most people in his life. At the start, Tony had been joking. At least he thinks he was. Bruce doesn't find it funny. Nor does he chastise him for making light of a serious incident. He frowns. “I’ve never met anyone who gets off on taking the blame for everything quite like you do, Stark. And that includes me.” 

It is a pretty difficult accusation to dispute. Fault is subjective, after all, but Tony hardly thinks he appropriates  _ more _ than his fair share of it. Clearly Bruce disagrees, but as he pointed out, he's wont to take a chunk of it too. Self hating peas in a pod.

The sun is getting lower in the sky— sunset in New York at street level is not when the sun dips below the horizon but when it disappears behind the lines of buildings caging them in on all sides. It's bright but with just a slight nip in the air, and Tony wishes he had grabbed a jacket on his way out. Bruce is no more warmly dressed but isn't affected by the temperature at all. A couple of kids splash near a fountain on the other side of the plaza; one thrusts a hand forward, making a pew-pew noise audible even from here. The other ducks, her arm raised above her head as if she carried a shield. 

He never asked to be a hero. He never asked to be an idol, or a role model. He only wanted to clear up his own mess, his father's mess. None of this was supposed to happen. 

“The point is,” Bruce says, and Tony rolls his eyes. 

“So there is a point?” 

“The point is, you don't get a monopoly on being at fault, and you can bet your ass Rogers isn't skulking on roof tops. He made his choice and now is living with the consequences. You get to  _ live _ with the consequences too, Tony. You have to. Because at some point in the sadly not too distant future, another apparently invincible bullshit mystic space monster is going to appear, and Steve will  _ need you _ . We will all need you. The fucking galaxy will need you, and sadly in our line of work that's barely even an exaggeration any more.” 

Tony looks at the New York memorial again, and considered similar structures in Lagos, London, Sokovia… the names of the dead, rows upon rows of them. The people they didn't manage to save. A list they did everything they could to keep as short as possible. 

“You jumping off a roof isn’t going to make that list any shorter.” Bruce says quietly. 

He hates that Bruce is always right. 

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't figure out how to end this but I've been really blocked lately so I wanted to publish something and put it out in the world, and Infinity War Eve seemed as good a day as any. I hope you all enjoy the film and that your fave makes it <3


End file.
